Don’t forget IHG Rewards Club ‘Friends & Family’ rates for cheap hotels

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Back in 2009, when the hotel business was in real trouble, IHG Rewards Club launched a special deal for stays at Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Indigo, InterContinental, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites hotels.

It was called ‘Friends & Family’ and was nominally aimed at people who were friends or relatives of hotel employees.

However, the company made no secret of the fact that they were happy for anyone to use it, and even posted links on forums that could be used. After some pushback, people claiming to be friends of Steve Sickel, the head of the programme, found that hotels would occasionally not let them use the rate. Other links, such as this ‘Friends and Family’ link that I use, continue to work just fine.

IHG Friends Family rate

The Friends & Family deals are usually priced below the ‘Advance Saver’ rate for the same dates. They carry the same conditions, ie no changes and no refunds.

The only difference is that these rates do NOT earn IHG Rewards Club points. Hotels do a VERY good job of enforcing this rule. You won’t earn stay credit either. Bear this in mind when booking, especially if you are taking part in the ‘Accelerate’ promotion.

Availability under this programme is worse than it used to be but you can still find the odd deal.

In London on Saturday 12th March, the Friends & Family link gives:

InterContinental Park Lane at £231 vs £265
Staybridge Suites Vauxhall at £96 vs £114
Holiday Inn Bloomsbury at £132 vs £156

Various other properties were available as well. This rate is valid worldwide, not just in the UK.

You have absolutely nothing to worry about by booking this rate using the link above. You will not be asked for any special ID or proof of your friendship with Jennifer. Just be very clear that you will NOT receive any points or stay credit.

IHG Rewards update – December 2021:

Get bonus points: You can earn up to triple IHG Rewards base points with IHG’s new Autumn promotion. It runs from 1st October to 31st December. You can register here and our full article on the offer is here.

New to IHG Rewards? Read our overview of IHG Rewards here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our article on ‘What are IHG Rewards points worth?’ is here.

Buy points: If you need additional IHG Rewards points, you can buy them here.

You will get a 100% bonus when you buy IHG Rewards points by 4th January 2022. Click here to buy or learn more.

Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from IHG and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Category

IHG Rewards

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Nick Burch says:

17 Feb17 February 09:52

From the “What are the key benefits of using Curve?” page:

Pay no standard cash advance fees at domestic ATMs, across debit and credit cards.*
*Subject to fair usage policies.

Also, section 2.2 of the terms and conditions:

2.2 Your Business Account. Your Account is a Business Account. …… you attest that
you are not establishing the Account for personal, family, or household purposes, and its
use by you must be limited to business expenses.

I expect quite a few of the more obvious MS routes will be caught by those, but some will still remain!
- Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
  
  17 Feb17 February 11:06
  
  This is a requirement from MasterCard to use the Commercial Prepaid platform.
Ian W says:

17 Feb17 February 09:53

I’ve received a similar response to Aimvpr from their customer support and have also taken a punt on the £75 card.

Referral details below:

Code: V97bT
URL: http://www.imaginecurve.com/r=v97bT
- jac says:
  
  17 Feb17 February 10:18
  
  Where to you enter the referral code? When clicking on the url I get message page does not exist while during registration I saw no option to add referral code
  - sd83 says:
    
    17 Feb17 February 10:28
    
    I asked the same question to the online chat agent… teething problems with website going live I assume.
    this was their response:
    
    “OK, sorry about that – but don’t worry, we’ll fix this on our end and ensure your friend gets his reward. Thanks for ordering 🙂 “
Scallder says:

17 Feb17 February 10:18

Didn’t know where to add the referral code in when ordering but if someone can find it then my code is here: H9sGD
bmi-fan says:

17 Feb17 February 10:34

Here’s another referral code to the pile:

GdJIw

Good luck everyone, I’m well excited about this!
Gavin says:

17 Feb17 February 10:34

I clicked Ian’s link above although it doesn’t seem to be working at the moment. Here is mine, thanks in advance if anything comes of it:

http://www.imaginecurve.com/r=PehZf
mark2 says:

17 Feb17 February 10:36

Who is behind this?
Have they got the capacity in infrastructure and finance to handle any volume?
- Rob says:
  
  17 Feb17 February 10:44
  
  Start-up, backed primarily by the people behind TransferWise (but it is not part of TransferWise). Could they handle 100,000 applications in a week? No. That is why the beta is 10,000.
  - mark2 says:
    
    17 Feb17 February 12:30
    
    I meant more volume of transactions.
    Do you have to give them the PINs for your cards?
    - Rob says:
      
      17 Feb17 February 13:25
      
      No
Adam says:

17 Feb17 February 10:51

Taken a punt on the £75 one, if it works brilliant, if not then as i say it’s a punt. Supercard has worked out alright for me so far… Another code to add to the list: http://www.imaginecurve.com/r=UbLO0
Jonathan says:

17 Feb17 February 10:54

Don’t think of it as a travel card – think of it as a way to lighten (or reduced the thickness) of your pursewallet. 1 card = circa 10 cards no longer in my wallet in my case. Not to mention a way of using Amex everywhere. I took a punt on the £75 version which if it works will be chicken feed.

I couldn’t sign up using IE – the website forms wouldn’t load but Chrome worked fine for me.

My code is BzRO5 or https://www.imaginecurve.com/r=BzRO5